Introduction
The study of Origen's anthropology has generated a great deal of interest in the last few decades.Footnote 1 This ongoing reassessment has filled considerable lacunae and redressed fundamental misconceptions in this area of his thought. There remains, however, an aspect of his anthropology in need of more thorough analysis. Scholarship on Origen's understanding of sin remains underdeveloped. Most studies of his conception of sin have concerned themselves with his famous teaching on the preexistent fall found in First Principles. Seldom has scholarship traced this theme beyond this early treatise. A notable exception is the ambitious attempt by Georg Teichtweier to offer a comprehensive account of Origen's understanding of sin in his Die Sündenlehre des Origenes. However, the scope of Teichtweier's project is so broad that any sustained expression of any particular aspect of Origen's hamartiological teaching is inhibited.Footnote 2
The present analysis will focus exclusively on how Origen conceives of volitional sin. To delimit the study further I will focus on Origen's understanding of sin in his Commentary on Romans. A careful examination of his elucidation of sin in this extensive commentary has yet to be written.Footnote 3 Here we possess Origen's sustained exegesis of an entire biblical book—the only one of its kind to survive—giving the reader his most prolonged reflection on human sin in his entire corpus.Footnote 4 Such a reflection demonstrates that Origen understands volitional sin as a misappropriation of the individual's tripartite makeup, a situation where God's law—natural law, Mosaic law, or the law of Christ—is breached through the soul's lack of moderation, caused when the lower element of the soul usurps the higher element and gives undue attention to the ephemeral needs of the body.Footnote 5 Through his close interaction with the apostle, Origen achieves here a greater measure of clarity and consistency in his understanding of sin than that found in his early work First Principles.
Deterministic and Origenian Anthropology
The fundamental framework for this discussion of sin is Origen's tripartite anthropology. The extent to which he articulates his anthropology in the Commen-tary on Romans is striking and the reason for this sustained explication is the deterministic anthropology attributed by Origen to Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion. These “heretics,” Origen says, argue “that the cause of each person's actions is not to be attributed to one's own purpose but to different kinds of natures.”Footnote 6 Origen counters by arguing that natures cannot be predetermined. Since everything that exists has been made by God, “uncleanness and defilement consists not in things or in essences, but in actions and thoughts less right.”Footnote 7 The rebuttal of this doctrine of natures is one of the prominent themes of the commentary.Footnote 8 Such defective cosmological and anthropological reasoning is resolved for Origen through an examination of what Scripture says about the individual. Based on the apostle's own words (1 Thess 5:23), Origen understands the individual to consist of “spirit” (spiritus), “soul” (anima), and “body” (corpus).Footnote 9 These are three “aspects” (esse) in the individual,Footnote 10 and they contain an inherent hierarchy.Footnote 11 While this tripartite structure is usually understood in a dynamic or tendential sense, its basis is nevertheless ontological.Footnote 12 The human spirit is distinct in Origen's anthropology.Footnote 13 He identifies it with the “conscience” (conscientiam),Footnote 14 says it acts as a pedagogue to the soul,Footnote 15 and sometimes refers to it as the “intellect.”Footnote 16 The human spirit is the divine element in humanity. It is responsible for moral instruction. When the soul deviates from the human spirit, the latter is reduced to a state of dormancy.Footnote 17 The soul is the seat of rationality,Footnote 18 serves to vivify the body,Footnote 19 and, even though it has fallen from its original state—an idea largely muted in the commentaryFootnote 20—it nevertheless remains a good creation of God.Footnote 21 But the soul is unstable, and while it may contain higher and lower elements or tendencies, it nevertheless should not be confused with Plato's tripartite division.Footnote 22 Origen describes the soul as an intermediary between body and spirit,Footnote 23 and says that alongside the spirit it is created in the image of God, thus representing the “inner man.”Footnote 24 An examination of Origen's conception of the body is directly related to our forthcoming discussion of sin and the passions and need not presently detain us long. Although this is a notoriously difficult and nuanced area of his thought, some measure of clarity is obtained by making the critical distinction between body qua body as opposed to body qua flesh.Footnote 25 The latter is a distinct theological concept that refers to the world of sin, corruption, and death as a consequence of Adam's transgression, as well as the emulation of this condition in our daily lives. This condition makes ethical decisions more difficult, but Origen insists that free will is preserved in the individual and it serves as a dominant motif in the commentary in his effort to refute his deterministic adversaries.Footnote 26 This refutation is further accomplished by refracting his doctrine of free will through the tripartite composition: the soul must always choose between virtue (spirit) and vice (body/flesh). Origen's hamartiology is a pronounced theme in the commentary and one major reason for this is found in the stark clarity with which he presents the ethical life: the individual must either progress in virtue or regress in vice.Footnote 27
Sin and the Law
Origen's tripartite anthropology is the essential framework through which to understand his conception of volitional sin. I will now show how this anthropology is joined to his characterization of sin through his understanding of law. Origen offers three definitions of sin in the commentary and each definition suggests that a violation of God's law constitutes sin:
A matter can be called “sin” if it is wrongfully committed, contrary to what nature teaches or what the conscience convicts us of.Footnote 28
This (natural) law raised sin from the dead, so to speak. In fact this is the nature of sin, if what the law forbids to be done happens.Footnote 29
One should know, however, that other learned men use this definition as well, that the nature and cause of sin is in whether something is added to or subtracted from the virtues.Footnote 30
These are his clearest and most succinct definitions of sin in the commentary. The definitions make it evident that Origen is organizing his thoughts around the idea of natural law and its relationship to the individual. In exploring this theme, I will demonstrate how he makes use of Stoic and Aristotelian vocabulary and ideas to clarify the apostle's thought. But this incorporation is not the impetus for his discussion nor does it supplant the authoritative role Scripture plays in his theology of sin. Throughout Origen's corpus, philosophy serves as a handmaid to biblical exegesis and is useful in elucidating scriptural revelation.Footnote 31 In the Commentary on Romans he remains disciplined in his plan to unfold the apostle's train of thought in the epistle and seeks to elucidate sin in light of the economy of salvation. To explore the compatibility of these definitions alongside his numerous other excursions on the subject I will now turn to his understanding of law and how this informs our reading of Origen's conception of volitional sin.
Origen's understanding of salvation usually arises from his cosmology, which in turn is always inextricably linked to personal responsibility. This is demonstrated in his understanding of the apostle's use of homonyms in the epistle, specifically the homonym “law.”Footnote 32 Origen recognizes that the apostle's use of the term law changes according to context. The law cannot always refer to the Mosaic law (e.g., Rom 2:14; 5:13, 20); rather passages such as these are best understood as including references to natural law. Accordingly, Origen offers several sustained reflections on natural law in the commentary, as he is the first church father to speak at length on the subject. Natural law is a gift of God for everyone (including angels) to convict all of sin.Footnote 33 The ability to ascertain natural law, that is, the state of being “capable of reason” (rationis capax), steadily grows in the individual,Footnote 34 and the goal of this “reasoning capacity” is “to teach him that what he is doing ought not be done.”Footnote 35 Those for whom natural law brings an awareness of sin and its subsequent moral corrective are said to exhibit better both the image of God and their own awareness of this image.Footnote 36 Origen wants to communicate that those without access to the Mosaic law are without excuse, for a transgression of natural law leaves the individual no less culpable than a transgression of the Mosaic law.Footnote 37 But this reflection on natural law is always attuned to the needs of his audience. A misunderstanding of natural law is a misunderstanding of God's economy of salvation. This is precisely the message he desires to convey to an audience that may have fallen under the influence of Basilidean teaching. Interestingly, two of Origen's longest digressions on natural law in the Commentary on Romans (5.1; 6.8) serve the purpose of castigating the Basilidean teaching that souls are transferred through various animals only to eventually reach humans (
). He insists that Basilides grossly misinterprets the apostle's declaration “but I was once alive without the law” (Rom 7:9). This does not refer, as Basilides supposes, to an absence of law altogether and its concomitant implication that our souls existed and were living in various animals before arriving in our present human bodies. Rather it refers to natural law, that is, to the law given by God before the Mosaic law. This is how we are to understand the apostle's teaching in light of the economy of salvation.
Although Origen remains committed to expounding the apostle's thought in Romans, this does not preclude his incorporation of Stoic concepts for further clarification.Footnote 38 The Stoics consistently taught that the ethical ideal is to live in accordance with nature. The first-century Stoic author Arius Didymus argues that the aim of all virtues is to live “consistently with nature,”Footnote 39 and “that every virtue which is associated with man and the happy life is consistent with and in agreement with nature.”Footnote 40 “It is manifest,” says the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “that in everything we should make it our aim neither to avoid that which nature demands, nor to accept that which is in conflict with nature.”Footnote 41 But Origen is not alone in appropriating Stoic ethics in such a manner. His understanding of sin as a violation of nature is consonant with the Alexandrian theological tradition. His predecessor Clement utilizes a similar definition in his own theology, even identifying reason (or nature) with the Word, or Christ.Footnote 42 Origen never explicitly makes such an identification, but would likely have agreed with his teacher.Footnote 43
This concern for the standard of natural law is limited if the individual's ability to ascertain such a standard is lacking. Origen addresses this by finding recourse in the individual's constitution in arguing that reason is implanted in the soul.Footnote 44 Even though Origen rejects the Stoic materialist conception of the soul, he nevertheless retains their particular language of governance within the soul. He insists that aid in ascertaining natural law is found within, insofar as this law “has been inscribed by the one who created man in the beginning on the governing part of man's heart [principali cordis].”Footnote 45 The principale cordis, or its Greek equivalent hegemonikon (
), is the Stoic term used to designate the higher or ruling part of the soul that serves the purpose of ordering the lower parts.Footnote 46 For the Stoics the hegemonikon perceives—or better registers and unifies—that which the senses detect.Footnote 47 In this same passage Origen equates hegemonikon with “mind” (mens) and elsewhere refers to the soul's rational power as the “heart” (cor).Footnote 48 Henri Crouzel fills out the picture by noting how Origen (in the Latin translation of Rufinus) can also refer to this part simply as “soul” (anima), while reserving an alternative Latin term for “mind” (sensus) to refer to the lower element of the soul.Footnote 49 So we have in Origen several terms used to designate the ruling part of the soul—the interior locus of the law. The interiorizing of natural law provides the theological rationale for the ethical standard and therefore emphasizes personal responsibility. This moral onus is intensified through his later assertion that natural law and divine law are one and the same: “God speaks . . . in the governance of the heart [principali cordis].”Footnote 50 Origen does not hesitate to equate the law of the mind with God's law,Footnote 51 and such agreement between the two is also basic to the Stoic philosophical tradition.Footnote 52 Indeed, Crouzel has observed that for Origen the hegemonikon “dirige son activité et que est une parcelle ou une émanation de la Raison universelle.”Footnote 53 As “l'organe de la contemplation divine,” the hegemonikon contains both an intellectual and moral sense, and is the principle of the supernatural realities.Footnote 54 Thus the activity of the hegemonikon in appropriating Origen's ethics is difficult to overstate. Yet another instance of the term demonstrates this interplay between its rational and moral facets. He notes that the apostle commands Christians to provide food and drink to the enemy in an effort to “heap burning coals on his head” (Rom 12:20). Origen makes the point that this desired repentance in the enemy is located in his “head”: “‘Head’ is the name given to the governing part of the heart [principale cordis], and it is rightly called the head since from its intelligence and wisdom all the members are guided.”Footnote 55 Thus the operations of both the intellectual and moral facets are instrumental in fulfilling the ethical life, for the hegemonikon is responsible for the actions of both the soul and the body.Footnote 56
As we can now see more clearly the act of sinning is not dependent upon possessing the Mosaic law. Origen clearly teaches that “God has implanted into the soul”Footnote 57 this “internal law”Footnote 58 and it is therefore “naturally innate within men.”Footnote 59 It is now evident why Origen crafts his first two definitions of sin around acts that are contrary to nature. Both the standard and the means of discerning such a standard work in concert with each other. But this act of violating nature is a complex ontological and ethical problem that necessitates further reflection and will require that we turn to his understanding of the passions.
Sin and the Passions
In this section I will argue that Origen understands sin to arise from irrational impulses found in the lower element of the soul. Such impulses are in close relationship to the body and become passions, and therefore sin, when admitted by the soul's higher element. Once again the tripartite structure of his anthropology, and indeed the ruling function of the hegemonikon, play a crucial role in helping us to understand the nature of the rise of the passions. Origen's manner of speaking about the passions is varied. Occasionally he simply echoes the language of Scripture (Rom 1:26), while at other times he incorporates the term in his explication of sin. Prior to our conversion “we were being impelled by the passions [passionibus] of sin and of the flesh. These passions [passiones], because of the law in our members, were bearing fruit, not for God but for death.”Footnote 60 This rather typical account of the passions in the commentary is helpful but by no means exhaustive of what he thinks of this phenomenon.
Origen draws from an existing philosophical and theological tradition. The doctrine of the passions is derived largely from the Stoics and is a notoriously difficult idea to describe with precision. This doctrine was articulated by the Stoics as part of their moral psychology to explain irrationality and the presence of (excessive) emotion in the individual. Broadly speaking, early Stoics understood the passions as judgments of the soul while later Stoics understood them as movements of the soul. Arius Didymus defines a passion as “an impulse which is excessive, disobedient to the choosing reason or an <irrational> motion of the soul contrary to nature (all passions belong to the controlling part of the soul).”Footnote 61 The Stoics understood four cardinal passions: appetite, fear, pleasure, and distress. The debt Origen owes to Stoic thought seems to be mediated by the debt he owes to his predecessor Clement of Alexandria. Origen works within an existing tradition and this tradition is evident in Clement's Miscellanies:
Appetite is then the movement of the mind to or from something. Passion is an excessive appetite exceeding the measures of reason, or appetite unbridled and disobedient to the word. Passions, then, are a perturbation of the soul contrary to nature, in disobedience to reason. But revolt and distraction and disobedience are in our own power, as obedience is in our power. Wherefore voluntary actions are judged. But should one examine each one of the passions, he will find them irrational impulses.Footnote 62
Clement offers themes we have already seen and others to be explored in this section. What captures our attention presently is his language of “appetite” (
), “impulses” (
), and “perturbation” (
). This language is not peculiar to Clement. Several times in the Latin translation of Rufinus we see the terms “appetite/movement/impulse” (motus), “thoughts” (cogitationes), and “suggestions” (suggestiones). Although the careful definition of such terms is crucial in ascertaining Origen's conception of sin, this has not always proven to be an easy undertaking. Richard Sorabji has noted Origen's tendency in First Principles to conflate “first movements” (primi motus) with “thoughts” (cogitationes), resulting in statements where he affirms that “pleasure” (hēdonē) is experienced before assent is given.Footnote 63 One gets the sense that the mere thought about sinning is sin itself. While this may be the natural conclusion from select comments in First Principles, it is certainly not the picture painted in the Commentary on Romans.
Reading the commentary in light of his understanding of “impulse” (motus) produces a measure of clarity. Origen praises the Greek, who through the work of natural law in his heart “and moved by natural reason [naturali ratione motus],” is able to “hold fast to justice or observe chastity or maintain wisdom, moderation, and modesty.”Footnote 64 Indeed, he says God has given every man “every disposition and every drive [omnes affectus omnesque motus] by which he can press forward and advance toward virtue.”Footnote 65 In these texts Origen understands motus as an impulse to be followed because it accords with God's law. But not all impulses are equal. Some of these suggestions are made by the devil, angels, and evil spirits.Footnote 66 However, more often Origen speaks of impulses that seem to derive from ourselves. In book 4 he speaks hypothetically of the man who possesses natural law and is faced with sexual temptation: “By a judgment of his own mind [mentis],” Origen says, this man “refused even to permit his thoughts [cogitationes] to consent to this sort of defiling activity.”Footnote 67 This text yields two interrelated points in Origen's hamartiology. This particular suggestion of a defiling activity is at odds with God's law, and these impulses are mediated, judged, and rejected by the rational faculty of the soul. In the commentary he clearly affirms that while many suggestions are irrational, one is not culpable until deemed so by the rational faculty of the soul.Footnote 68 The thoughts are declared evil when the soul moves to recognize these irrational impulses. Now to understand the origin of these impulses we turn once again to the nature of the body and soul.
I recall the previous distinction between body qua body and body qua flesh, as this helps to understand how flesh is construed almost exclusively in negative terms.Footnote 69 This terminological transition is inextricably linked to the nature of the soul. The soul is unstable, and the reason for its instability is twofold: the exterior attraction to opposing options and the interior opposing tendencies. Henri Crouzel has noted this characteristic in Origen's theology: “The soul is both the scene and the stake . . . [and] by reason of the two elements or tendencies that divide it, the soul is in league with both sides.”Footnote 70 There seems to be here at least a tacit recognition of irrationality on the part of the lower element of the soul. So we remind ourselves that just as the higher element of the soul is in close relationship to the spirit, the lower element of the soul is in close relationship to the body. The relationship between the lower element of the soul and the body is evident throughout his exegesis in the commentary. This point is illustrated in his explanation of the spiritual meaning of circumcision:
Circumcision means to cut off a certain part of the genital organ through which the succession of the human race and fleshly propagation is served. I judge that, through this, something is indicated in a figurative sense: namely, that if some uncleanness cleaves to the soul by association with the flesh, if someone has covered his soul [anima] with a mind [sensus] that is set on seductive desire, these things ought to be cut off from it. The reason why the cutting is inflicted upon the genital organs and not upon the other bodily parts is to clarify that the vices of this sort do not come to the soul from its own essence [animae non ex propria substantia] but rather by an inborn impulse [genuino motu] and by the incentive of the flesh [incentiuo carnis].Footnote 71
Here our author identifies three distinct actors in the drama of sin: 1) “its own essence” (propria substantia, viz., the soul's higher element / hegemonikon), 2) “an inborn impulse” (genuino motu) or “mind” (sensus, viz., the soul's lower element), and 3) “the incentive of the flesh” (incentiuo carnis, viz., the body).Footnote 72 First, recall that sensus usually refers to the lower element of the soul, and with this in mind, it should also be understood as this “inborn impulse” (genuino motu). Furthermore, the “inborn impulse” and the “incentive of the flesh” do not stand in apposition, but refer instead to two distinct but closely related ideas. Hence we have two actors seeking to overtake the soul: the sensus or genuino motu and the incentiuo carnis.
Such a manner of expressing the etiology of sin was not quite as clear to Origen earlier in his career. First Principles 3.4.1–5 chronicles his struggle to account for the duality of will insofar as we possess within us a will to sin. He offers three possible solutions: Plato's tripartite division of the soul, the “two souls” theory (viz., one superior or heavenly and one lower or earthly), and finally a single soul possessing a good will while the flesh possesses an evil will.Footnote 73 He rejects the Platonic theory for lacking scriptural support. He explains the merits of the “two souls” theory and leaves it open-ended. He also leaves the soul/flesh theory open-ended with the caveat that it implies God created something at odds with himself.Footnote 74
What eluded Origen in First Principles seems to achieve a greater measure of clarity in the Commentary on Romans. Here he may be drawing the present distinctions in order to counter the “two souls” theory and predetermined natures. These two works should be placed alongside the biblical text that first brought Origen into this quagmire and appears no less than seven times in First Principles 3.4.1–5: Gal 5:17 (“The spirit warreth against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit, so that we may not do the things that we will to do”). What may have once suggested to him that humans are endowed with a second soul now seems to suggest something different. In at least two places in the commentary (1.21; 6.1) he uses Gal 5:17 to prove his tripartite anthropology, an anthropology that posits only one soul. He seems more inclined to understand that as a result of the fall the lower element of the soul and the body have acquired sinful tendencies and are said by the apostle to have a will of their own. The soul's lower element and the flesh belong to a world where sin, corruption, and death are commonplace.Footnote 75 He makes this clearer in book 7 when he suggests that part of the soul may have a “life” that acts to separate us from the love of God. He describes this as the life of sin.Footnote 76 In First Principles Origen struggles to articulate a proper dissociation of sinfulness from createdness. He is now able to do so in the Commentary on Romans because flesh is not created, it is acquired. Origen's exegesis exhibits a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, he insists that the higher element of the soul is not in its essence corrupt or reprobate, a lesson he repeats ad nauseam throughout the commentary.Footnote 77 The essence of the soul, the mens or hegemonikon, is pure. On the other hand, he must acknowledge the presence of sinful tendencies in the lower element of the soul. Without capitulating to his deterministic enemies, he must nevertheless paint a negative picture regarding the soul's proclivity to be led into sin.
A consideration of Origen's exegesis of Rom 7:14–25 sheds more light on the complex relationship between the law, the hegemonikon, and impulses. In taking on the persona of the weak man in order to instruct the church in these matters,Footnote 78 “Paul” says, “For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man; but I see in my members another law fighting against the law of my mind, leading me away as a captive to the law of sin that is in my members” (Rom 7:22–23). He continues:
This will for the good he designated as the law of the mind [mentis], which law of the mind [mentis] agrees with the law of God and consents to it. But the impulses [motus] of the body and the desires of the flesh, on the other hand, he calls the law of the members, which leads the soul away captive and subjects it to the laws of sin. For it is certain that the desires of the flesh drag the soul toward sin and subject it to its laws. And just as the law of the mind [mentis], which agrees with the law of God, if it can take possession of the soul, leads it to the law of God, so also the law that is in the members, and the lust of the flesh, if it seduces the soul, would subject it to the laws of sin.Footnote 79
Here the function of “law” is as follows: law of the mind ≈ law of God.Footnote 80 So once again, the “law of the mind” is the higher element of the soul or hegemonikon. What Origen means by “law of the members” is what our previous text calls “incentive of the flesh.” What is assumed in this excerpt is once again the presence of the lower element of the soul as an actor in the drama of sin. This is so because he says the “law of the mind” or hegemonikon must “take possession of the soul.” This suggests, as Crouzel has maintained, that the soul is in league with both sides: spirit and flesh. Sin has occurred when the hegemonikon no longer has possession of the soul. Here the lower element is active in preventing the soul from agreeing with the law of God. Its presence is always one of a familial relationship with the body, and, if I can be so banal as to say so, the lower element of the soul sympathizes with the body in its desires. As such the soul is always on the precipice of inciting the passions. Conversely, as Origen states elsewhere in the commentary, sin is eliminated when “this soul comes back to itself and opens the door of its mind once again to piety and the virtues.”Footnote 81 Thus we see how the lower element, by virtue of its fallen nature,Footnote 82 associates itself with the law of the members.
Origen does not consider the “impulses” (motus) of the body and the desires of the flesh to be ipso facto evil. After all, the apostle endured both external and internal afflictions “for the sake of the self-control of his body and his endeavors for the highest instruction.”Footnote 83 Conversely, the one who sins is the one who is “ensnared by the allurements of the present life.”Footnote 84 What is evil, and therefore sin, is when the soul, seduced by such an attraction, moves in the direction and thus under the domain of these bodily desires and impulses. If Origen attributes evil to the impulse he does so knowing, from extensive experience and speaking after the fact, that following such an impulse will lead to evil.Footnote 85 A “small detour” is enough to usurp nature and lead the soul into death.Footnote 86 Persistent acquiescence to these suggestions (impulses) is to be under the dominion of sin. This failure to properly control nature's inducement is characteristic of the body becoming flesh. It is an act first suggested by the flesh's cohort, the lower element of the soul. In and of itself the body does not have its own “will,” but as we have seen its “will” is the personification of the lower element of the soul due to their close association. When these two usurp the order of nature then sin is said to establish dominion.
Despite the familiarity with sin that some people exhibit, the activity of the moral life is not predetermined. The apostle neither teaches nor intimates that the body and the soul are destined for a certain fate irrespective of people's desires. Origen is clear that humanity has in common a single nature that is suited equally for salvation or perdition.Footnote 87 His teaching on the olive trees (Rom 11:16–24) is concentrated around the idea that the soul has the ability and responsibility to guide the impulses in a godly direction. Incorporating Matt 12:33 for support he argues that a tree (soul) is made good or evil by its choices, not on account of its birth.Footnote 88 Origen is clear: the impulse is only evil when the rational faculty makes a choice that is contrary to the law of God. All rational beings possess the ability to guide the soul. The soul sins by following an impulse that, if carried to its fulfillment, will lead to moral failure. These moral decisions define the soul,Footnote 89 and a negative decision by the soul is always caused by a lack of faith.Footnote 90 In fact, any good or evil moral action taken in this life, according to Origen's reading of Rom 2:15–16, makes an indelible imprint on the soul to accuse or defend it on the day when God will judge the secrets of humanity.Footnote 91 Those who consistently fail in this regard are said to lack the second (spiritual) circumcision and are “enslaved to Egyptian customs and barbaric mental inclinations [motus animi barbaros seruet].”Footnote 92
Origen's tripartite anthropology is essential in understanding his teaching on sin. The lower element of the soul acts in collusion with the body to provide the initiation of sin. The body's role in this act is theologically so intimately bound up with the lower element of the soul that making distinctions is of little importance to him. The passions are incited when the hegemonikon makes an improper judgment to acquiesce to these impulses and moves in the direction of the body.
Sin and Moderation
In what follows I will move on from an emphasis on some of the ontological aspects of sin to a more thoroughly ethical discussion. My investigation of volitional sin in Origen's Commentary on Romans has testified to some reliance on Stoic thought forms. But as Origen continues to wrestle with the apostle's thought in Romans he turns to Aristotle for further clarification. His incorporation of the Aristotelian conception of moderation will play an important role in the remainder of this investigation. Simply stated, one violates nature, and therefore incites the passions, when one lacks moderation. Here I recall Origen's third definition of sin: “One should know, however, that other learned men use this definition as well, that the nature and cause of sin is in whether something is added to or subtracted from the virtues.”Footnote 93 This definition is found in the midst of a protracted exhortation on the value of the virtue of “moderation” (temperantia), and stems from the apostle's command in Rom 12:3: “Do not be wiser than you ought to be, but be wise in moderation.”
Origen asserts that virtues become vices when not governed by moderation. Thus the over-realization of justice leads to injustice and the over-realization of prudence leads to imprudence. He borrows a page out of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics when he argues that excess and deficiency destroy perfection, while adherence to the mean preserves it.Footnote 94 But virtue is always rooted in cosmology and he consistently reminds his readers that a proper understanding of the virtues is a proper understanding of the law of God.Footnote 95 We begin to glimpse how the third definition complements the first two by considering how moderation, as dictated by natural law (i.e., philosophers knew this) and confirmed in Paul, plays a significant role in delineating virtue and vice in Origen's thought. But the immediate arena of the working out of moderation is the human body. Since nature provides discernible bounds of right and wrong (further illumined by ScriptureFootnote 96), his ideal of moderation precludes the existence of excess (or deficiency) in a manner that violates nature and allows the soul to succumb to the excessive needs of the body. The absence of moderation indicates the presence of the passions. Therefore as Origen considers the passage in Rom 6:1–2—living in sin and dying to sin—he makes the argument that living in sin is indicative of an unstable soul that usurps the law of nature and inflames the passions:
The flesh has natural appetites for food and drink which need to be kept within certain limits of satisfaction. But if someone, by the enticement of sin, should exceed these limits, he is no longer yearning after food and drink, a flesh which suffices nature, but after excess and drunkenness. In a similar way there even exists in the flesh a natural drive by which it demands to be united with a woman for the sake of procuring offspring. But if he should be turned aside from the law, sin enticing in this occasion, and his impulses [motus] of natural lust should be roused to illicit things, he lives to sin, since he is not obeying the law of God in these instances but the persuasions of sin [peccati persuasionibus].Footnote 97
We now begin to see more clearly the confluence of Origen's three aforementioned definitions of sin. The first two definitions bring into sharp relief the fact that any act contrary to nature is a sin. These are rather austere descriptions of sin. What brings out their force, and therefore their theological color, is how he complements them with a theology of moderation. This all comes together in the above text. Origen here repeats that the standard of nature is not to be breached, and if it is breached one has allowed otherwise innocuous impulses to be “roused to illicit things.” For Origen moderation cuts the Gordian Knot of ethics. This much is evident by the overwhelming emphasis he places on the concept throughout the commentary. Provision within the bounds of moderation is the focal point of his exegesis of Rom 8:12–13 when encountering the warning not to “live according to the flesh.” Origen notes how the apostle makes the distinction between provision with respect to necessary matters and provision with respect to lusts.Footnote 98 His comments on Rom 13:14 likewise demonstrate his emphasis on this delicate ethical balance. He notes how the apostle practices his “customary moderation” with regard to necessities, but no provision should be made for “pleasures and excess and every kind of lust.”Footnote 99
Moderation is the goal of ethical living. The standard of nature—indeed nature itself—is usurped when the impulses are roused to excessive measures. Once again I need to draw attention to the fact that our author does not suggest that nature's inducement is evil. Nature's inducement is what maintains life: food and drink for the body and a natural drive for reproduction.Footnote 100 Provision is requisite for the terrestrial life. Too much or too little provision is sin, or, as Lorenzo Perrone has aptly stated, sin is the abandonment of the “virtuous ‘golden mean.’”Footnote 101 Achieving the “golden mean” is difficult enough for the Christian and nearly impossible prior to conversion. Before conversion we were “impelled by the passions . . . [and] . . . bearing fruit . . . for death.”Footnote 102 “Overwhelmed” by vices, we were nevertheless “not without our own active engagement in sin.”Footnote 103 Free will is present but considerably weakened.Footnote 104 Thus the will's inability to choose virtue consistently, in true Aristotelian fashion, stems from its lack of habitual training.Footnote 105 The soul in the habit of practicing vice finds it difficult to eschew its former life and turn to the practice of virtue.Footnote 106 Furthermore, any struggle to maintain the “golden mean” is a struggle always related to the vicissitudes of the body. The ideal is always in jeopardy because the struggle to survive necessitates subjecting the soul to testing on a regular basis. The hegemonikon is incessantly active in making ethical decisions, for “it is impossible that a soul exists at any time without having a ruler.”Footnote 107 Just as the advanced climber continuously makes decisions and transmits those decisions—almost unconsciously—to the arms and legs, so also the advanced soul is characterized by the filling of the mind with virtue and Christ in order to ward off the continuous impulses of the body that would suggest contrary behavior.Footnote 108
Origen is, however, always cognizant that God's purpose for our terrestrial life is to train us in the virtues and unite us with him.Footnote 109 Spiritual progress is realized when the soul brings these impulses into conformity with the law of God. Once the soul is “converted to better things,” the “will for the good is (now) present in him.”Footnote 110 When one is circumcised in the heart, Jesus “cuts off the habits and passions of the old man and the vices of the flesh.”Footnote 111 Such progress finds further expression in the filling of the individual with the Spirit, a process that puts to death the deeds of the flesh. While Origen stresses the importance of individual repentance in this process, he recognizes that the “golden mean” is made possible through grace.Footnote 112 This also leads us to a critical difference between Origen and his predecessor. Clement follows the Stoics in seeing the goal of progress in this life as achieving apatheia (
), freedom from the passions. Origen, on the other hand, urges metriopatheia (
), a restraint to be imposed on the passions.Footnote 113 One does not therefore find any references to the eradication of the passions in the Commentary on Romans. Rather their existence is assumed and their restraint is exhorted.
His final exhortation to the life of moderation provides Origen the opportunity to situate his argument within the context of our created identity. His comments on Rom 13:13 reveal that “excess and debauchery” are more “befitting of wild animals and beasts than rational [rationabilibus] human beings.”Footnote 114 This reveals how Origen considers a lack of moderation to be a denial of the image of God in the person. Being “rational and intellectual” (rationabilis et mens) the “inner man” is able to have knowledge of God and has the capacity for receiving the Holy Spirit.Footnote 115 Therefore a lack of moderation runs counter to one of the defining characteristics of humanity: rationality. The body's natural desires are variegated and impetuous—indeed often irrational—unless controlled by intellectus and prudentia.Footnote 116 Therefore, sin is to favor the irrational, indeed it gives credence to that which is irrational and disorderly, and the soul is characterized as fleshly when it gives its assent to that which is fluctuating and ephemeral. Having done so the soul now wishes to be identified with vice, irrationality, and death. That the soul associates itself with that which is irrational, ephemeral, and excessive explains the notable absence of any mention by Origen of the human spirit. As I stated earlier in this study, when the soul does not follow the spirit's persuading influence, the latter simply recedes into the background and remains in a state of dormancy.
But does such an emphasis on the abiding existence of the passions lead Origen to a disparaging theology of the body akin to those of the very adversaries he seeks to challenge?Footnote 117 Select passages may suggest there is something inherently wrong with the body. Unqualified remarks creep into the commentary where Origen seems both to affirm and deny what nature dictates with regard to sexual reproduction.Footnote 118 But this is not the whole picture. Origen's rhetoric often betrays his intent. So while he at times agrees with the Stoics that some matters pertaining to the individual are “indifferent,”Footnote 119 many of the very needs of the body that sustain life are also a vexing reality of life in this world because the body must always be kept within certain limits. This is a standing temptation insofar as the complete elimination of sin and death in the believer is an expectation only of the future kingdom.Footnote 120 Furthermore, often he employs rhetoric to indicate a body that has already committed sin, and is therefore understood as flesh. But this rhetoric does not betray a basic fact: sin derives not from the body, but from the heart.Footnote 121 There are, in fact, several positive affirmations of the goodness of the body.Footnote 122 But insofar as he is fully aware that “all creation groans,” this goodness can, admittedly, be difficult to see without the eyes of faith. We are reminded that the body is a gift of God to unite us with him and is therefore necessary for this pilgrimage. If bodily existence emerges as a source of frustration, it is also a challenge, for as Peter Brown remarks, it is “a frontier that demanded to be crossed.”Footnote 123
So the body is no more culpable than anything else that lacks rationality or free will. The decision to sin belongs to the soul. The soul, as it were, allows access for the body to exceed the bounds of nature. Original sin produced instability through corruption and death. Recalling Crouzel's observation that the soul is in league with both sides, we can deduce that it is therefore no neutral bystander. Its inherent instability makes it both an advocate for virtue and a willing partner for vice. Despite its instability and repeated failure to do the good, Origen often emphasizes the desires of the body over against the soul in order to avoid any denigration of the latter that may have a familiar ring to his deterministic adversaries. Although the “noble and rational” soul is subjected unwillingly,Footnote 124 it nevertheless implicates itself through its choice to acquiesce to the irrational impulses of the body: “It is the thought and the mind that fail to perceive correctly what defiles the man.”Footnote 125 The soul must therefore make provision for the body without validating these irrational impulses that seek to bring the individual into disrepute.
Conclusion
The text of the Epistle to the Romans and the immediate concerns of his audience shaped Origen's theology of sin in his commentary. I have shown that this conception of volitional sin lends itself to three dominant emphases. God's law is the perfect and discernible standard that humanity is not to contravene. Such a contravention occurs when the lower element of the soul and the irrational impulses of the body gain favor by the soul's higher element. This usurpation of the soul is characterized by a failure to practice moderation insofar as the soul has chosen that which is excessive or deficient rather than following God's law. This understanding of the apostle's thought proved to be a substantial contribution to Christian identity in the third century. Evincing a balance and sensitivity to the needs of his audience, Origen bequeathed to the church an interpretation of the apostle that may have elicited a reading by both Augustine and Pelagius.Footnote 126 The present study has sought to fill a critical lacuna in contemporary scholarship addressing Origen. But the work is far from complete. Considerable work remains to be done on his Commentary on Romans. There are, however, encouraging signs that Origen's wider reading of the apostle has gained traction in the scholarly community. This promises to provide much insight into the great Alexandrian's thought.
